Gimme Some Sugar

Blog Roll

Friday, May 31, 2013

Yahoo! News: President Barack Obama on Friday publicly called on Congress to
prevent Stafford student loan interest rates from doubling this summer.

The president, who spent time on the 2012 campaign trail speaking out
against a rate increase, spoke in the Rose Garden on Friday surrounded
by college students. He pressed Congress to extend current rates or work
toward a compromise to avoid the increase—3.4 to 6.8 percent—set to
take effect July 1.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said reforms are needed, but they are divided over the solution.

“Higher education cannot be a luxury for a privileged few,” Obama
said on Friday. He noted, as he has in the past, that it was only nine
years ago that he and his wife, Michelle, finally paid off their student
loans, which he said cost more than his mortgage. “And we were lucky,”
he said, noting they had “more resources than many.” And this, he added,
was around the time the first couple planned to start saving for their
daughters’ college funds.

Obama had warned on the 2012
campaign trail that allowing rates to double would cost the average
student borrower $1,000 for each year of college over the life of the
loan. Stafford loans are offered to low- and middle-income students.
That added cost could greatly affect families weighing the expense of college, as well as put recent graduates in difficult positions, especially given the current tough economic climate, experts say.

Recent polling
shows that interest in these overblown controversies was always a
largely partisan phenomenon and that the public at large have given them
little weight. So the President seems to feel like he’s able to go back
on the offensive with a substantive policy push, rather than letting
Washington continue to be bogged down with political soap opera BS. The
GOP’s non-response to that push shows that they’ve got pretty much
nothing here. All they can do is beg the media not to cancel that soap
opera.